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Soiling is among the most significant sources of degradation in the performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. Its effect reduces the transmittance of the module encapsulant and thus the module short-circuit current and its efficiency. The importance of soiling, which is well-known, has recently gained even more attention, due to many important investments in utility-scale projects in desert regions all around the world. But other than in desert climates, soiling has important degrading effects also in the tropical region: South East Asia is a remarkable example, in which soiling is often amplified in the urban environment of its mega-cities, by particle emissions of industrial, transport, and natural origin. The hot and humid climate, and the high UV dose combined with soiling, enhance cementation, with the result that soiling is usually only poorly removed by the frequent raining events of the region. In this work, we present a study of the effect of soiling on a sampling of modules from a 10-year-old installation in Singapore. The study is performed with a variety of metrics, from the usual I-V characterization to less utilized approaches, such as colour measurements, incident angle modifier, spectral responsivity, spectral transmittance and physicochemical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]